Fornits

Fornits Home for Wayward Web Fora
An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

No everything is not my fault all the time. I alway have a part, though in most instances there is always two sides. You know what your doing wasn't asked for, I don't think you know me and I didn't ask you to take my inventory from the little you have read.  What I was saying about fortitude is that MMS was not easy it was hard.  And I do beleive that anyone that followed through with it had backbone, strength, or whatever you want to decipher that as.  

And what right or power do you have to be slicing up Aileens world and telling her its wrong.  A big part about me not being in MMS especially when I got out was having my own experience, and not haviing someone to tell me what to eat  or when to pee, or how to think!  Cultlike? Brainwashing?

Look I have no idea, what the answer is.  This doesn't feel like a solution I feel like I am getting squeezed off of this thing--If I don't join--then see ya--thats what it feels like.  

And I am not faking that I am an Alcoholic and I am sure you know what alcoholism is?? I go to AA, and the way I drank was never normal. I never felt normal, and when I went to MMS I got glimpses of feeling apart of.  And something that John said to me was "to go out into the world and always remember to create a community around you" So I have been active Daily in AA for abit now.  

I don't think I want to be apart of this website anymore, I feel like I have said my peice and hopefully someone heard something,  I have learned alot on this web-site and that welcome thing I was talking about earlier feeling welcomed, and like there is a place for me---this isn't it right now. I feel sad because well I think I know a lot of you and I think that we should beable to talk about it--I hope that everyone here knows that I care about MMS and I especially care about the  people the girls.  -H

To whomever just wrote out how they felt and witnessed abuse @ MMS:

Where would you (who ever you are)be with out your experience @ MMS? If you didn't get sent there where would you be?

And if you think you should have been just sent to a therapist or so on instead of a two year  treatment facilaty---Why would your parents have sent you there?

Why where you sent there?  Because you needed to do community service with under privilidged kids and that would have made whatever problems you had better?

We all got sent to MMS for reasons!

Where would you be if you didn't go there and what path were you on before you were sent away?

And another thing I find is unfair  that I don't know who I am talking to. Who am I talking to get honest use your name!

-Hannah P.

`This is really really important, what you guys are doing
thought a lot about my experience at MMS-since I have left.  I have alot of respect for your intentions. I also have due respect and gratitude for what I recieved from MMS (for example being told to do things I didn't want to do, the truth being that I didn't want to do anything anybody told me to do, because I had my answers on life itleast I thought I did) elements that you all are pointing at and calling abusive.


The truth is one MMS has changed ten fold since I have been there and has a completely different face since you graduated.

I find most of the posting here especially the letter to Colleen un professional, and based in self-centered fear. I have read alot of  posts and my observation is that they are mostly pleas of righteous pride and anger, this unfortunately does not help anyone. And especially does not serve as anything useful because there is nothing here that can really be used agianst MMS ( this seems to be your intention, "to shut down the school.") When ever I have something I need to look at in my life and I find my self righteously angry about it and blaming someone else for my life-I have to ask my self and sit with this question, "After all didn't I set the ball rolling?"

I will never be able to deny experience there, I think about it everyday.  Reading through all of these postings leaves me in still more ambiguity about what the majority of MMS Alum have to say about their time spent there.

Though I really thought about your statement earlier, "how you wouldn't send your daughters to MMS."  And the truth is that I wouldn't either, I wouldn't wish my brian, issues, and hard time on anybody especially my children, and the last thing in the world I would want to do is send them away anywhere. My parents loved me that was not enough, because no one was raising me. This place was made to help young girls to grow up into women.  And yeah it was a process of separating the women from the girls.  My experience there wasn't supposed to be easy, I was being sent to treatment, because I was not living life, I was dying.  

Maybe I shouldn't have children then because Being a teenage girl in this world is throughly uncomfortable. Though all I can talk about is my experience, being that I was safer and growing @ MMS.  And I think that a question that I would like to pose is what would have become of you if you weren't sent there?  I know for me that I definately would not be in college, perhaps dead, on the streets, with no dreams, and still know idea of how to ask for help.  

Not everyone has the backbone and fortitude to learn from this tough love based institution and come out better for having gone and Then there is the other outcome feeling abused and worse for having gone.  I beleive that I came out of this insitution better for having gone.

Though I have had to still have my own experience of life after MMS.  I have been angry and i have thought some things wrong about MMS.  Yeah I got thrown away by my family, and sent to montana for two years, no boys, no alcohol, and I felt like those two years were stolen in some way.  I had to work through this stuff after I graduated.  Left standing is that those two years were the most important two years out of my young adult life, and I learned the most, and grew the most when I was there.  I am still learning from my experience there, and agian I am not saying that I am on a pink cloud because @ MMS I learned some hard ass shit, like that my Mom was dying and I didn't want her to, my Dad had a drinking problem, I learned I was an alcoholic there, I learned that I had to live everyday to its fullest because needless to say we are all at risk for something, but I knew what I was at risk for the same thing my mirroring image, my mother is still currently dying of.  Facing my worst fears, issues, and needed restitution- was fucking hard, and its still hard, and there is nothing pink, or fluffy about it.Fluffy pink clouds have never been my experience in life, and i don't remember reality every being a pink cloud.

I also know and have stated earlier that MMS is changing and I beleive open to more changes and I think talking to John is the most important step that you can take in doing this.  

I want to state for whatever record this pertians to that there was absolutely no physical abuse, and there was no sexual abuse when I was there, and I have yet to hear of any direct accusation.

This is not about making anybody happy or pleasing anyone.  This is about me finding my own truth and really encouraging other to really search there souls, mind, and memories for theirs.

Doing my best to understand, and speak up
 Hannah

You had a lack of power over your children? And they we're out of control, so much that the situation was out of your hands?  What would you do? One might feel hopeless, helpless, a failure, and you needed to take action quick because your baby girl was still somewhere out there and you couldn't take care of her.  The truth is for me and my experience, life was much better @ MMS then in my family life.  I was safer, I was feed, I was learning something different and I was feeling uncomfortable and still living life and deal with it while feeling uncomfortable and feeling what geniiune comfort really was.  You could focus your attention on any family unit ( because that is what MMS is) even your own and apply these same feeling and perceptions that really aren't even valid because no one is using their name.  

I have all due respect to feelings and perceptions.  Though the truth remains ambigious.  I have had my thoughts about MMS and questions the way things were set up there---I do that with everything? I doubt anything that I don't understand.  Your goign to get people that had good experiences and people that had bad experiences.  I am unclear what it is you intend to do with this information, or what you are able to do with it? --- Respectfully, Hannah

When I was twelve I stated in a journal entry, ?I am not sure if I have a heart anymore.?  I was so lost and in so much pain- When I was 15 I wrote after I was arrested and on probation- ?I sit here on my lonely bed in sympathetic silence waiting for change, love and happiness. When will things change into a fantastic path of choice is their anyone out there who cares I?m in the dark and I can?t see where I?m going a bright light here & there but fastly fades away like a poem.?  ( Jan. 1998)

On May 15, 1998 I was sent to an assessment course and then shipped off to MMS.  My family confused because they felt faulty unable to give me what I needed.  They loved me undoubtedly, But they were incapapble of raising me.  So they sent me to an institution where I could be raised.  

I was told when I was 9 years old that my Mother had Huntingotns Disease ( a terminal, genetic, nuerological disease) I was also told that I had a 50% chance of inheriting the gene as well. Raised in a family with abuse, mental disease, alcoholism, I was definitely a nuerotic, lost child.  I was taking care of my parents up until I left for Montana. And the only reason I survived those years was by drinking on a daily basis.  

I could not stop drinking, I gave up on myself, you and god everyday, I sucked my Dad dry for everything he had left, I ignored the trembleing presence of my Mother and had her 6 feet under, and I diagnosed my self on a daily basis with everything in the books, including Huntingtons Disease.

"How Dark it is before the Dawn." Alcoholics Anonymous, (the Big Book)
 
 I graduated from MMS in 2000.  I will have 7 years of Sobriety on the 15th because I was loved for 2 years by people that genuinely cared about my best interest.  I think that MMS has a lot of pros and alot of cons, like everything in life, there were some real negatives to my experience there, and some golden positive life changes that I wouldn't trade for anything.  


Today I am a strong Women. Mission Mountain Shcool gave me a strong foundation to base my life on.  I found myself with friends, I was helped in rebuilding my relationships with my family members, morals and values, and esteem.  

I am a human living in a world, that is sometimesunkind . And MMS was an artificail institution that reflected both sides of the world not just the kind side.  Life is life a process, and I get to live it, and feel eveything.  I have anger about things still that happened years ago.  The truth is that this website is posted with perceptions and feelings.  I want to really pose to every one because I have had to do it myself what is your side of the street.  I am not stupid, I went to MMS and I saw things that weren't okay but fucking A, I 'll walk outside my house right now and probable see lots of stuff that is "Not Okay."

I truely beleive that it is very important for everyone here to question their motives and their feelings, and their story. Life is not easy and I didn't get sent away to MMS because I needed a vacation.  I saw no point to life any more and I wanted to die.  

I deal with my life today and I owe a lot of that to my experience @ MMS.  Life is not always attractive and in my life this has been the case a lot.  I have been a care giver for my Mother since I graduated.  This kind of unfairness happened in my life all the time, and the truth is that it happens for everyone.  Life is filled with saddening, frightenting events,  and love, joy and endless happiness as well, though nothing is gareenteed, even if you went to MMS.

To be honest, I have seen things in the last couple of years that blow John's Attack groups as you spoke on earlier that would blow that cooky concept right out of the water.  John never attacked anybody.  There was definate intimidation but hell I was intimidated by everything.  

Life is life, and human beings are human beings, inevitable imperfect.  Life has not gotten easier or harder because I went to MMS it=life never changed. The loving staff and girls @ MMS were the ones that taught me how to change.  

I hope we can all find our truth and  deal with it !

IT meaning LIFE!

Love and kindness
Hannah